


an uncurtain discovery

by Missnoodles



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Acts Like a Cat, Attempt at Humor, Bad Parent Gabriel Agreste, Canon Levels of Angst, Crack, Curtain Fic, F/M, Flirty Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Hot Mess Adrien Agreste, Identity Reveal, Idiots in Love, Ladrien | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Finds Out First, Sloppy Makeouts, Smitten Adrien Agreste, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missnoodles/pseuds/Missnoodles
Summary: When he returns from school on Wednesday afternoon, Adrien discovers the darkness in his own home. He struggles to come to terms with it. To his utter mortification and delight, Ladybug is nearby to rescue him.(He does not discover that his father is supervillain. That will happen on a different Wednesday.)
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 28
Kudos: 164





	an uncurtain discovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanj_sanj](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanj_sanj/gifts).



> this fic brought to you by my cat and snowpacalypse 2021
> 
> thanks [rikka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikkapikasnikka/works) for betaing!

On Wednesday, Adrien returned home from school to find an intrusion in his bedroom.

He stared at it, _hard,_ for a few minutes before swiftly turning on his heel and exiting the room.

Only a few meters away from the threshold of his chamber, he conveniently encountered the most likely culprit of the emergence of the anomaly. 

“Nathalie,” said Adrien, in as disdainful a tone as he could muster, “what is the meaning of this?”

He attempted to peer down at her in the way he’d seen his father often do when displeased, but he quickly realized that this tactic was far less effective if you didn’t tower over the other in height. Or have glasses to look down through. 

Though somehow Adrien doubted Nathalie would’ve been intimidated anyway. Nathalie could sometimes be swayed by a moving enough display of dejection, but Adrien wasn’t feeling _dejected_ at the moment. He didn’t want to be insincere with Nathalie, despite the crime she had committed in his bedroom while he’d been away.

“The meaning of what, Adrien?” Nathalie responded, nonplussed.

“The… _addition_ to my windows.” Adrien knew he should be more contrite. He _should_ , but… the thought of what she’d added to his room sent fresh waves of offense through him.

It didn’t _belong_. It was new, and unfamiliar, and _he didn’t like it_.

“It recently came to your father’s attention that you have not been getting adequate amounts of sleep at night,” Nathalie explained in a clipped, neutral tone.

His father actually noticed that? Adrien felt a sense of warmth rising in his chest, melting the icy annoyance that had held him captive since seeing the state of his fenestration.

“Vincent reported that your most recent photo shoot had to be relocated several times to find an area with lighting that would not accentuate the bags under your eyes,” Nathalie continued, and just like that, the warmth in Adrien’s chest dissipated. “He took the liberty of requesting I oversee the installation of blackout curtains. Studies have shown that urban light pollution can have detrimental effects on sleep.”

Adrien held his tongue. Blackout curtains weren’t going to stop a late night akuma attack.

“You’re welcome,” said Nathalie, clearly taking his lack of response as acceptance. “Now, if that was all, I must be getting back to work. Your Chinese tutor will be here in twenty-three minutes; please ensure you are presentable by then.”

And with that, she walked away, leaving Adrien standing alone as the clacking of her heels echoed in the hallway.

* * *

Adrien did his best to ignore the peculiarity adorning his windows throughout his Chinese and piano lessons steadfastly looking everywhere _but_ his windows. 

Unfortunately, he had to look at _something_. He felt guilty at how uncomfortable his tutor had clearly been with Adrien’s unprecedented amount of eye contact. Adrien would have to make it up to him next week.

Still, he made it through the afternoon without incident. He also found a renewed sense of enjoyment in the empty dining table at dinner, if only because it offered a reprieve from the unwelcome installation across the house.

Eventually, however, Adrien had no choice but to return to his lair and confront the textile abomination that now cohabited his room.

Bizarrely, Adrien felt the urge to growl at it. He swallowed it down, moving towards his desk with the intent of starting his homework.

“I am not going to let it get to me,” Adrien told himself as he sat down, training his eyes on the computer screen.

“If you say so, kid.” Plagg’s voice emerged from the basin of his most recent fencing trophy. “Or you could let me handle it.”

“How much cheese would that cost me?” Adrien asked, knowing Plagg rarely offered his assistance for free.

“None,” Plagg said, floating up out of the trophy to shoot a glare at the cascading sheets of velvet adorning Adrien’s windows. “The satisfaction of victory is payment enough.”

For a moment, Adrien was tempted. He smiled, envisioning the creamy velvet blackening and crumbling away into nothing at his touch. 

But he’d have to somehow explain to Nathalie how he’d not only gotten the curtains down from the track six meters in the air, but also managed to destroy all evidence that the curtains ever existed. Not to mention, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t just pop back into place with the next “Miraculous Ladybug!”

(He should probably ask Ladybug more questions about how exactly that worked. For important, hero-type reasons, obviously, and definitely not for the destruction of undesired textiles.)

“Thanks, Plagg,” Adrien said, hoping his tone conveyed his genuine appreciation. “But I just need to learn to live with it.”

Adrien turned back to the computer, centering himself so that his monitors covered his entire field of view. He quickly pulled up the one thing that never failed to capture his attention: the Ladyblog.

Adrien spared a moment to glance over Alya’s latest article, a recounting of their most recent battle with Miss Connection, a young woman who had been suffering from particularly patchy cell reception, before navigating over to the gallery page. He selected some of his most recent favorites and opened them in new windows, which he then cast to fill his surrounding monitors.

Satisfied that visions of his glorious lady in red would catch his eye during any brief moments of inattention from his assignments (rather than the far less appealing sight of what used to be his windows), Adrien pulled up his history assignment and began reading Mlle Bustier’s instructions.

Typically, Adrien was able to complete his daily assignments without issue. _Typically._

Sure, the workload was minimal and the required text easy enough to parse, but Adrien couldn’t shake the lingering feeling of unease. The usually peaceful quiet of his room was suddenly an unbearable silence; Adrien could only assume that the recently added thick, heavy fabric was to blame. The usual background clatter was almost entirely swallowed up in their velvety depths, leaving Adrien alone with the faint hum of nearby electronics that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Had his computer always been so _loud_? Was there something wrong with it, or was he just in such a state of heightened awareness that he was suddenly noticing things that had never bothered him before?

He wouldn’t turn around and look at the curtain. He _wouldn’t_. 

The unshakeable feeling that he was being watched was completely irrational and Adrien was definitely going to ignore it. He was not going to let it get to him. He _wasn’t_.

He won’t turn around. No matter how unbearable the prickling sensation on his neck became. He _won’t_.

Adrien looked up at his upper monitors in supplication, trying to take comfort in the clear, aquamarine gaze of his partner. She stood, indefatigable, with her arms akimbo and her gaze meeting the camera so firmly that Adrien felt she was looking through the monitor at him, and she found him wanting. 

Ladybug would not be impressed if she found out that her partner was foolishly fixated on his new curtains, of all things. She would not be impressed _at all_.

 _“Really, Chat? Curtains?”_ Adrien could hear her voice in his head. _“It’s no wonder I’m not interested in you, the boy I’m in love with would never get this worked up about curtains. Ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!”_

Imaginary-Ladybug laughed high and loud, covering her mouth with a dainty, gloved hand, and a tall, beefy, dark haired figure appeared to wrap his arms around her from behind. 

_“C’mon babe, forget about him,”_ he said with a heavy American accent for no discernable reason. _“We have dinner plans with my parents, who are both alive and definitely love me, because I’m an inherently loveable human and if you made me a temporary hero I wouldn’t mess up 25,000 times. I’d serve you Hawkmoth’s brooch on a platter and then you wouldn’t need Chat Noir at all!”_

 _“Oh, that sounds wonderful, Mr. Not-Adrien!”_ Imaginary-Ladybug swooned. _“I’ll give you the Tiger Miraculous right after our wholesome family dinner. It’s perfect for you because it’s like a cat, but way sexier and more badass!”_

Adrien groaned, slumping forwards onto his desk and reaching up to rake his fingers through his hair. He knew Ladybug wouldn’t ever say those things, even if Adrien worried they were true. At the very least, “paranoid about curtains'' would fall into the con list on anyone’s measure of potential as a romantic partner.

...Maybe he should try turning on some music.

Adrien opened up Spotify and hovered his mouse over his “Time to B#” playlist for a moment before changing his mind and moving down the row of his most recently played to select “Jagged Stone Radio.” He needed something more intense than Chopin to stay on task tonight.

And for a good hour and forty minutes, Adrien managed to focus to the rhythm of Jagged’s heavy guitar riffs and keep his mind off the looming, colossal curtains behind him. He’d finished his history assignment and moved on to algebra, with which he’d made some serious headway, when a sudden _thump!_ startled him.

Instinctively, he jumped up from his chair and _yowled_ as he turned to face the source of the noise.

Scanning the scene, Adrien saw naught but the slightest flutter of cream.

The _curtains_. They were _moving_. Alarm bells went off in his brain. Adrien could feel his heart racing as adrenaline rushed through his veins.

_Attack!_

Heedless of higher logic, and perhaps without the involvement of his cerebral cortex at all, Adrien bounded across the floor and lept over his couch to land in a soft crouch about a meter away from the threat.

Adrien brought his face down to the ground and stared.

The curtain did not move.

Satisfied that his prey did not suspect him, Adrien pounced forward once again, curling his fingers in preparation to strike. He made contact with his target, catching the soft velvet in his hands and savoring the briefest moment of victory before it all came crashing down.

Literally.

Adrien screeched and thrashed; his body suddenly encased in thick, heavy drapery with no end in sight. He tried to find an escape but couldn’t see anything but darkness, and the more he squirmed, trying to fight his way out, the more tangled and lost he became.

And it was suddenly, terribly, hot, and only becoming hotter. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been trapped, but Adrien could already feel sweat dripping down his forehead. The air was thick and damp, he was stifled by it, he couldn’t get enough in his lungs, he couldn’t breathe, he needed out, out, _out_ —

Suddenly, a blinding light appeared from above. Adrien instinctively turned towards the light source, gasping for air, and was met with the most divine vision his overburdened brain could conjure: _Ladybug_.

She stood in the aperture of his window, encased in the glow of the sunset. She clutched his velvety nemesis triumphantly in her left hand. To Adrien, she looked like a Greek warrior of legend, proudly raising the carcass of a felled beast that had held a beautiful maiden as its prisoner for too long.

Adrien was quite certain he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life. He suspected no greater beauty had ever existed; for what could possibly compare to the sight of his lady triumphant?

His cheeks were so, so hot.

Ladybug tossed the corner of the curtain off to the side as casually as one would throw a dirty towel in the bin; clearly unthreatened by its might. Adrien was so enraptured with her magnificence that he didn’t notice her moving closer until she was suddenly kneeling directly in front of him; her beguiling blue eyes level with his own.

“Adrien.” Her voice was impossibly soft. “Are you alright?” she asked, reaching one small, gloved hand towards his face. For a moment, Adrien thought — hoped — that she would cradle his cheek with her palm, and he had to bite back disappointment as she dropped her hand only inches from the scorching surface of his cheeks.

Perhaps she’d noticed the light sheen of sweat across his face. Or perhaps she had never meant to touch him at all.

“Adrien?” Ladybug asked again, and he realized that he’d been mutely staring at her hands for several long seconds. Adrien didn’t think his face could grow warmer, but to his mortification, his blood vessels rose to the challenge.

Maybe he’d have been better off slowly suffocating at the hands of his curtains.

“I’m fine!” He finally managed, his voice a little too high. _I bet beefy tiger man’s voice doesn’t break when he’s nervous. He probably gets all broody and silent, if he ever gets nervous at all._

(Adrien had once spent several long hours on a Saturday afternoon trying to look broody for a photoshoot advertising Gabriel’s newest line of skinny jeans. Vincent had eventually given up on the idea when Adrien’s best efforts had resulted in “the look of a puppy who wants just a bite of meatball from mama’s spaghetti.”)

“Are you sure?” Ladybug’s eyes bored into his. “You look a bit feverish.”

This time she _did_ reach out and touch him, resting the dorsum of her hand across his forehead.

Adrien, like an idiot, leaned into her touch and _rubbed his brow against her knuckles._

He jumped back at her soft giggle.

“Oh my god, Ladybug, I’m so sorry, that was totally inappropriate, I didn’t mean—”

“Shhhh,” Ladybug cut him off, and then suddenly her hand was back on his forehead, but this time, instead of resting it there, she dragged her fingers back towards his scalp and through his hair.

As Ladybug moved to lightly scratch behind his ears, Adrien heard a low rumbling sound. For a moment, he wondered if his computer really _was_ acting up, before he felt the reverberation in his chest and realized it was something far, far worse.

He was purring. In front of Ladybug.

Purring, in front of Ladybug, while she gave him scritches and right after he’d quite literally pounced on his curtains, an action that she may or may not have witnessed.

And he wasn’t Chat Noir right now.

“Let me die,” Adrien croaked. “Let the curtains take me.”

Ladybug giggled again. Her laughter chimed like the sweetest of bells.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” she said, bringing her other hand to finally cup his cheek. “What kind of hero would I be if I allowed the cutest boy in Paris to perish in his own bedroom?”

Perking up at her words, Adrien abruptly forgot why he’d been embarrassed in light of this new, vitally important information. “You think I’m cute?”

Ladybug drew both her hands back as if she’d been scalded — which wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, since his face was rapidly approaching the temperature of the sun itself. He could probably bake a cookie on his cheek if his skin wasn’t so slick with sweat that the dough would slide right off.

“Yes! I mean! No!” she yelled. “I don’t think you’re cute! You think I’m cute!”

Well, Adrien couldn’t really argue with that.

“I think we’ve already established that I think you’re more than simply cute, milady,” he drawled, trying desperately to regain his inner balance and capture the easy confidence of his alter ego.

Ladybug’s eyes widened into dinner plates.

“You—me— _cute_ —milady?!” Ladybug followed this collection of interjections with a series of incomprehensible noises before settling on silently opening and closing her mouth like a particularly attractive fish.

“I think you broke her, kid,” Plagg said, deciding to make his appearance at the _most obnoxious time possible, what the hell, Plagg?_

“You’re CHAT NOIR?!?” Ladybug screeched as she skittered backwards on her arms and legs like a crab, her voice reaching a pitch that could not be detected by most adults over eighteen. Despite her startlingly accurate impression of a teakettle, Adrien still thought her voice sounded better than most other sounds.

“You… didn’t know?” Adrien ventured. His ears picked up the sound of fading laughter behind him, which Adrien presumed was Plagg, who apparently had just enough self-preservation to remove himself from Ladybug’s direct line of sight after doing something likely to upset her.

(Adrien had no such sense of self-preservation — and even if he had, it would have been quickly overpowered by the much stronger instinct to remain as close to her as she’d allow.)

“Of course I didn’t know! We aren’t supposed to know! How would I know? Did _you_ know?” Ladybug was standing now, waving her arms haphazardly around her face as she spoke.

“Did I know that I’m Chat Noir?” Adrien asked, to his own immense regret. _Of course that’s not what she meant, why would you say that?_

“No, why would I ask you that?” Ladybug’s eyes were unforgiving lasers.

Adrien winced.

And just like that, the anger drained completely out of Ladybug’s face. She slid down onto the floor, her limbs settling in an unnatural heap that made him question, not for the first time, if Ladybug had joints the same as normal people, or if she had transcended past that human limitation.

“Sorry, kitty,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s fine, LB.” Adrien kept his tone light. “I probably deserved it.”

 _Now_ she was looking at him. He tried not to squirm as she scrutinized him.

“Adrien.” Ladybug’s voice had taken on that same impossibly soft, warm tone again. “Just because I’m panicking doesn’t mean you deserve to be snapped at.”

“But I revealed myself—”

“ _Plagg_ revealed you,” Ladybug interrupted, scooting closer to him. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“You really didn’t know before Plagg showed up?” Adrien asked, incredulous. 

Ladybug shook her head, her smile small but unmistakable.

“Then… why were you _petting_ me?” He bit his lip, unsure if he really wanted to know the answer to that question. Ladybug knowingly petting her partner made sense, especially after he’d just made a fool of himself by acting like an actual cat. 

Ladybug petting Adrien Agreste, teen model and failed Snake Miraculous holder, to comfort him after he’d jumped face first into his curtains? Made _no sense at all_.

Ladybug’s cheeks flushed scarlet.

“I, uh, well, you were, and then I was, and you, we, ah,” she stammered, and Adrien felt his stomach drop into his stomach like lead. If Ladybug was having this much trouble telling him, it surely wasn’t anything good. 

“Ugh, pull yourself together!” Ladybug shouted suddenly. Adrien desperately tried to flatten his hair, unsure exactly what she wanted him to pull together but wanting to make her happy anyway.

“Oh, no, I meant me. Not you,” Ladybug said, softer now. “You’re perfect.”

_Perfect?_

Adrien stared.

“I mean!” Her eyes looked a little wild now. Adrien gulped. 

“Not perfect, _obviously not.”_ She waved her hands vaguely towards the slaughtered velvet, as if to illustrate her point. “But you don’t need to change anything. Or fix anything. I think you’re getty prate -- pretty great! Just the way you are.”

 _Oh_ , thought Adrien, as his higher-level cognitive processing evaporated into a pink cloud of sparkling bubbles.

“And,” Ladybug continued, her voice deathly serious as she brought her eyes to meet his. He could feel her breath on his face. When did she get so close? 

Adrien tried very hard not to swoon.

“I was petting you because I wanted to,” she declared. “You were cute and sad and I really wanted to touch your hair.”

“You can touch my hair whenever you want,” Adrien blurted.

“Oh! Um,” Ladybug bit her lip and looked down at her hands, then reached up to tuck a stray lock of his hair behind his ear. Looking back up at him through her lashes, she asked, “Just your hair?”

“Anything,” he let out with a soft, breathy rush of air, and licked a spot of perspiration that had fallen on his upper lip.

And suddenly Ladybug’s other hand was reaching to cradle the back of his neck and she was pulling him down, down, down. Adrien offered no resistance; falling into her as rapidly as six meters of heavy curtain collapsing on a teenage boy.

Her lips met his with too much force, too much heat, and Adrien could still taste his own sweat, but neither of those things mattered: he was kissing _Ladybug_.

More importantly, _Ladybug_ was kissing him.

Adrien wiped his damp palms on his jeans before reaching out his eager, foolish hands to pull her closer. She arched into him, matching him in fervor, and Adrien lost his balance, toppling backwards onto a thick pile of velvet. She followed him down, breaking contact with his lips to trail kisses on his jaw as she settled on top of him. Adrien was on fire; the heat of the curtains below him and the warmth of her body and the burning ache within him was _too much_ and he never wanted it to stop.

Distantly, he could hear someone speaking, but Adrien couldn’t focus on anything but _her_. He cupped her cheeks and guided her lips back to his, bumping their noses together in the process. She met him more gently this time, and he took a moment to savor the soft curve of her lips before moving to deepen the kiss. 

Ladybug sighed into him, opening her mouth just slightly, and Adrien was just mustering up the courage to meet her tongue with his own when suddenly Plagg’s voice rang loud and clear in his left ear.

“Seriously, kid, your girlfriend needs to _hide_ , now!”

Ladybug sprang back as quick as lightning, on her feet and out the window just as a sharp rapping sounded from Adrien’s bedroom door.

“Adrien,” came Nathalie’s voice from across the threshold, impassive as ever. “I heard a disturbance coming from this wing of the estate. Are you decent?”

“I’m… dressed,” he managed, standing up and straightening his clothes. Adrien wasn’t quite sure he could apply the word ‘decent’ to being partially ravished by a superheroine after sacrificing his dignity at the altar of drapery.

Nathalie entered the room then. Adrien waited with unease as she surveyed the state of his room, taking in the mass of fabric surrounding him and the sweating beading down his forehead.

He braced himself as she took her glasses off and began polishing them, shaking her head. Was she angry? Disappointed? Was she going to yell at him, or worse, tell his father? 

But Nathalie didn’t do any of that. Instead, all she said after putting her glasses back on was, “If the curtains were not to your liking, I would have preferred you to have contacted me via e-mail instead of attempting to rectify the situation yourself.”

“Sorry, Nathalie.” Adrien hoped she couldn’t hear the relief in his voice. He wasn’t in trouble?

“I am relieved you are unharmed,” she allowed, the corners of her eyes softening almost imperceptibly. “I will send you a link with some alternative options, please review them and respond within the next hour so that I can have the contractors install a new set tomorrow.”

And with that, she was gone again.

Adrien let out a shaky laugh as Plagg yelled, “Yo, pigtails, you can come back in now.”

Ladybug peaked in from around the edge of the window, her cheeks red and hair slightly mussed, before climbing back into Adrien’s room. She stopped to stand a few feet away from him, twisting her hands together in front of her stomach.

She looked smaller than before, almost… shy?

_Huh._

“Sorry I got a bit… carried away.” Ladybug’s voice was subdued.

“You didn’t!” Adrien rushed to reassure her. “I mean, maybe you did, a little, but that’s fine. I don’t mind. You can carry me away — I mean, get carried away with me — any time.”

“Apparently you don’t need me to carry you, _Chat Noir_ ,” Ladybug shot back with another burst of confidence.

“Ah, yeah, about that…” His neck was sweating again. “I thought you’d be upset if our identities were revealed, but you seemed… uh, not angry?”

“Oh, well...” Ladybug was biting her lip again, and Adrien wondered at how often she seemed to cycle between indomitable confidence and skittish trepidation.

“It’s… not great, that your identity is compromised,” Ladybug admitted. “But, now that I’m the Guardian, it’s inevitable that I’d find out anyway.”

“Besides,” she continued, slowly uncurling her limbs and once again blossoming with self-assurance as she walked towards him. “I’m _really_ glad it’s you, Adrien.”

“Y-you are?” he managed to stammer as his heart pounded against his ribcage.

“I am.” She reached out to grab his hand, enveloping it between her two smaller ones. “You’re the boy I love, kitty. You always were.”

“Me?” Was this really happening? “Not beefy tiger man?”

“Who?” Ladybug crinkled her brows together, squishing the spot in the center of her mask into a line.

Adrien looked away, embarrassed. “I may have… made up a fictional guy in my head to represent the boy you’re in love with.”

She was going to think he was an idiot. Ladybug was going to laugh, and say maybe she didn’t really love him if he was that silly, and he’d never learn her real name and they’d never get a hamster together.

Ladybug did laugh. And she did call him silly.

“Silly kitty,” she whispered right before landing a soft peck on his lips. “You’re the only beefy cat man for me.”

“Really?” he said, feeling a bit dazed.

She hummed in affirmation before kissing him again. Adrien willed his knees not to buckle at the sensation. He wanted to pull her closer, to melt into her, to lose himself in her — but he still had questions.

Reluctantly, he broke the kiss, but reached out with his free hand to cup her smooth cheek, unwilling to give up the physical contact entirely.

“Do I get to know who you are, milady?”

Ladybug scrunched up her nose thoughtfully, and it took every ounce of Adrien’s hard earned self-control to not lean forward and kiss her again. Her thinking face was unfairly cute.

“I think you should figure it out yourself, it’s only fair,” she decided. “You’ll have to pay attention to what girls are showing bug tendencies the way you showed cat tendencies.”

“How is that fair?” Adrien couldn’t contain the whine in his voice. “You didn’t figure me out from the cat tendencies, Plagg gave it away!”

She smirked at him.

“Don’t pout, kitty,” Ladybug said with a gentle tap to his nose. “I’m much closer than you think. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Will you let me take you on a date, when I find you?”

Ladybug laughed.

“No, kitten.” She kissed his cheek. “I’ll take you on a date.”

Ladybug stepped backwards then and gave his hands one last squeeze before she let go.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said with a wink, climbing through the window and shutting it behind her, and then she was gone.

Adrien stood there, watching her zip through the city, his face pressed against the glass, until she was out of sight.

And then he stood just a bit longer, until a soft tap on the glass next to him drew his attention. He looked to find a tiny ladybug ramming against the glass, wings beating frantically as it tried to find a way in.

Adrien couldn’t help but empathize with the ladybug’s plight. He started to open the window again as he remembered the way he and Marinette had fruitlessly attempted to navigate the glass sliding doors in New York. The way the ladybug’s wings fluttered reminded him of the way she —

Oh.

_Oh._

Well, that made a lot of sense actually.

Adrien slid the window shut again as the ladybug flew in.

He needed a shower — after all, he had to be ready for his lady to ask him on a date at school tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> in my defense i was left unsupervised and alone for a week


End file.
